Eskil Ullberg

Provides a statistical framework to measure the value of trade in intellectual property (IP)

    Explores ways to introduce the framework in international standards

    Discusses a proof of concept performed in a developing country



Patents and other intellectual property (IP) rights are increasingly part of cross-border trade in their own rights. Patent transfers and patent licensing between inventors, investors and innovators create new business strategies of cooperation in the creation of new technology – increasing the productivity in the stock of technology assets – and efficient “distribution” of these rights. The rights bundles are then used – also increasingly – in products and services being traded cross-border, furthering economic efficiency created by this cooperative strategy. Today’s international trade statistics, however, lack statistics explicitly on trade flows from ideas, based on IP rights.  This book offers an idea based statistical framework to measure IP, (i.e., increasingly depends on trade in ideas) and explores ways to introduce the framework into international standards. Specifically, it offers a theory of value to measure the flows from IP and an asset view of IP to deal with allocation of resources and who owns these rights. This is then contrasted with the current way IP is treated and a “gap analysis” is used to identify what needs to change in the standards. This new framework can help develop theories, policies, practices and inform the decisions needed to better leverage the human capital formation of inventors everywhere.

Praise for Intellectual Property Statistics…

“In this book, Prof. Ullberg has undertaken a Herculean task – to lay out a paradigm for the collection of IP Statistics to ensure that the … market of trade in ideas has the information and data necessary to function well.

[the] volume should be viewed as a starting point, a work in progress, but an important one that could very well influence the development of this important set of data on trade in ideas.

At a time when global issues … require both new ideas and the spread of those ideas widely to help ensure both economic growth and continued global economic convergence data that helps us monitor and evaluate what is happening in trade in ideas will be extremely valuable.”



–      Robert Koopman, American University, Washington, DC, USA and

Former Chief Economist, World Trade Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

This book examines the role of intangible assets (IA) in companies and countries for achieving sustainable economic growth. The authors particularly focus on Sweden and other Nordic countries to analyse the IA gap using a systematized “IA metrics” approach. They also discuss the incentives needed for strategic investments into useful IA to gain national competitiveness from an economic, social and environmental policy perspective.

The authors contend that despite the increasing importance of IA and intellectual capital (IC) in the economy, the current discussion has only been centered on intellectual property, which is one of the more prominent forms of intangibles. As this book demonstrates, IC and IA encompass wider dimensions of human, process, market, and renewal capital, among others. Featuring real case examples from Spotify, Minecraft and Izettle, this book offers a strategy for the resurrection of competitive advantage in the globalized economy and the advancement of some key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

"This excellent collection of essays provides new insights as to how the development and diffusion of knowledge are facilitating convergence in the structure of research organizations across the globe -- a process that has enormous implications for how actors in all parts of the world compete with one another in an increasing array of arenas. 

The essays have valuable implications for understanding how producers of all kinds of knowledge across the globe are competing with one another and how geographical space and nation states are less important in the competition for novelty."

Rogers Hollingsworth
University of Wisconsin (Madison)
University of California San Diego


About this book

*    ​Provides the current research on policy (causality) and measurement (statistics) in internationalization and competiveness​
*    Presents a collection of papers built from two workshops hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science
*    Identifies the basic problems within the field and analyzes strategies adopted by businesses and governments for institutional development, emerging market development, education and entrepreneurship
    Addresses fundamental issues along several dimensions including economics, higher education and strategic cooperation

This volume showcases contributions from leading academics, educators and policymakers derived from two workshops hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science (ICES) at George Mason University on internationalization and competitiveness. It aims to present key areas of current research and to identify basic problems within the field to promote further discussion and research. This book is organized into two sections, focusing on: science and economics and innovation policy and its measurement, with an underlying emphasis on exploring connections across disciplines and across research, practice and policy.



The first workshop was held at George Mason University (GMU) in Arlington, VA, USA in March 2013 and a second, building on the key results from the first, was held at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden in October 2013. A variety of problems were discussed and several interdisciplinary concepts in internationalization and competitiveness have already emerged from these workshops. For example, many of the presentations emphasized a need for productivity, which is a key goal of economic development. It was proposed to shift the emphasis from productivity towards creativity by examining property right regimes and their measurement to provide incentives for creative idea generation. These regimes span across higher education, invention, labor markets, and many other markets and institutions.



Addressing fundamental issues along four dimensions--economics, higher education, strategic collaboration, and new research methods--this book provides a multidimensional, interdisciplinary perspective on the challenges and opportunities for future development.

“This is a book for the times. Never have we been more in need of the wealth creation process that can only come from innovations subjected to the trial and error process of selection to decide what among all the experiments can be supported for further trial.”

Vernon L. Smith, Nobel Laureate in Economics 2002, Chapman University


“Eskil Ullberg … departs from the error made by Arrow, an ambitious leap, perhaps, but one that is in this case warranted. Eskil seeks to explain more of the mechanisms by which property rights, specifically IP, can be sold by inventors to diversify risk and to monetize value. Using the methodology of experimental economics, he creates a controlled game in which players – rewarded with money returns, to the extent that they follow rules, manage risk, and execute smart trades – reveal how economic agents might generally transact in IP rights traded in organized exchanges.

In testing how such trading institutions work, this research seeks to bring Adam Smith’s trade theory up to the modern day work on market design by such scholars as Vernon Smith, David Porter, Steve Rassenti, and Charles Plott.”

Thomas W. Hazlett, Professor of Law & Economics, George Mason University, USA and Director of the Information Economy Project


“Eskil Ullberg reports in this book perhaps the most rigorous experimental analyses yet to appear on patent trade. Anyone interested in market-based approaches to the protection of ideas will benefit from the insights found in this sophisticated work.”

Dan Houser, Professor of Economics, George Mason University


This book will be published by Springer and during the fall of 2011.

Book abstract: Healthy IPRs examines some of the central issues currently taking place in the field of pharmaceutical Intellectual Property Rights.
Chapter 5 looks as IPRs as tradable goods in institutionalized markets and using experimental economics to generate experimental facts about this trade to outline relevant policy issues.